January 2008

Elisha Kent Kane (1820-1857)
The U.S. Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin:
A Personal Narrative
New York : Harper & Brothers, 1854

This gripping narrative tells the tale of an 1850 expedition to search for the missing British explorer Sir John Franklin, lost in the Arctic after attempting to chart the Northwest Passage in 1845. Elisha Kent Kane was the medical officer and historian for the Grinnell Expedition. While the Grinnell crew did find some evidence of Franklin's party, their search was unsuccessful.

Gould Library Special Collections

February 2008

Map of Ascension Island
Charles Darwin
Geological Observations on the Volcanic Islands and Parts of South America During the Voyage of H.M.S. "Beagle"
New York, D. Appleton and Company, 1896.
3d Edition, with maps and Illustrations

Charles Darwin set sail on the H.M.S. Beagle in 1831. On this five-year expedition, he collected specimens and made careful observations of animals, plants, and geological formations. The collections and notes he gathered on this trip were instrumental in the development of his theory of evolution.

Darwin visited Ascension Island, a volcanic island in the South Atlantic, in 1836, near the end of his voyage.

Gould Library

March 2008

Carter, David A.
600 Black Spots:
A Pop-up Book for Children of All Ages
New York : Little Simon, 2007
1st ed.

One of the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2007, 600 Black Spots is part of a growing collection of pop-up books in Special Collections.

In this book, Carter sends readers on a scavenger hunt for black dots that winds through a series of inventive paper pop-up sculptures. Featuring bold, primary colors and vivid black and white, the book combines a modern, abstract design with a playful aesthetic.

Gould Library Special Collections

April 2008

Masao Yamamoto
Nakazora
Design by Reiko Nakajima and Masao Yamamoto
Tucson, Arizona: Nazraeli Press, 2001
Gould Library Special Collections

The space between sky and earth, the place where birds, etc. fly. Empty air.
An internal hollow. Vague. Hollow. Around the center of the sky. Or, emptiness.
A state when the feet do not touch the ground. Inattentiveness.
The inability to decide between two things. Midway.

- Dictionary definition of the Buddhist term “Nakazora,”
from Masao Yamamoto, Nakazora

May 2008 

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898-1943)
John Brown’s Body
Doubleday, Doran, and Company, Inc.
Garden City, New York, 1928
Gould Library

Barry Moser
John Brown’s body [by]
Stephen Vincent Benét:
Wood engravings by Barry Moser
Pennyroyal Press
Easthampton, Mass., 1980
Gould Library Special Collections

Winner of the 1929 Pulitzer Prize, this epic poem tells the story of John Brown’s attack on Harper’s Ferry and the Civil War, from the points of view of Jack Ellyat, a Northern soldier, and Clay Wingate, a Southern soldier.

In 1978 the Book-of-the-Month Club of New York commissioned these prints by Barry Moser to illustrate a new edition of the poem. The first one hundred impressions were “pulled on a special paper for its private distribution to patrons and friends,” (p. 3 of portfolio). The portfolio contains eleven signed prints.

June 2008

Samples : A Book Containing Many Fine Pages From The Books to be Published by the Limited Editions Club in its Seventh Series with a Note on Book Collecting by Sinclair Lewis
New York : Limited Editions Club, c.1935
Letter and response card and envelope included

Gould Library Special Collections

This sample book advertising the newest publications of the Limited Editions Club was sent to Miss Luella F. Norwood in December, 1935. Founded in 1929, the Limited Editions Club published illustrated, limited editions, offered to member subscribers. The spiral-bound book included sample pages from the press’s recent and upcoming editions. The varying sizes of the bound pages reflect the designs and paper stocks of each book. In an introductory essay on book collecting, Sinclair Lewis reminisces about the “steel-engraved voluptuousness” of fine-press editions from his father’s library.

The membership solicitation letter that accompanied the sample book is addressed to Miss Luella F. Norwood, a 1914 summa cum laude graduate of Carleton College. Norwood went on to receive her Ph. D. in English from Yale in 1931. In 1935, when she received this letter and sample book, she was Head of the Department of English at Spelman College and Atlanta University. She donated a number of books to Carleton College, including this one.